To Hull and Back

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Only Fools and Horses episode
"To Hull and Back"
Series	Christmas Special
Writer	John Sullivan
Director	Ray Butt
Producer	Ray Butt
Duration	90 minutes
Airdate	25 December 1985
Audience	16.9 million

To Hull and Back is an episode of the BBC sit-com, Only Fools and Horses, first screened on 25 December 1985. It was the first feature-length addition of the show, and the fourth Christmas special.

1 Synopsis
2 Quote
3 Story Arc
4 Trivia
5 Errors
6 External links

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The Trotters are enjoying another night at the Nag's Head, Rodney tells Del Boy all about his latest girlfriend of the week, and Albert talks to a woman his age named Ruby. Then, Boycie and his business partner Abdul call Del in for a secret meeting, which involves Del visiting The Netherlands to smuggle diamonds for them, for which they are being paid £15,000. Del agrees to do the mission.

Ruby tells Albert that her son used to be best friends with Del in school, as well as mention that her son is local policeman DCI Roy Slater, who even arrested his own father Harry.

The next morning, as they arrive at the market, Rodney believes the diamond smuggling trip is very dangerous and illegal, but Del assures him that everything will be OK. Just then, Denzil shows up in his lorry, and asks Del to leave him alone since Denzil and his wife Corrine just got back together, and he promised her that he'd stop getting drunk, stop gambling, stop seeing Del, and get a steady job. With all that said, Denzil drives off, while Rodney reminds Del about what he did to earn Denzil's anger.

The Trotter brothers quickly run off from the police after trying to flog watches that play 36 different national anthems, but they run into Slater and his right-hand man Terry Hoskins. Slater tells Del and Rodney that he's already investigating the case, and already knows that Boycie and Abdul are involved, only he doesn't know who the courier is.

Slater, Hoskins, and the Trotter brothers head off to Sid's cafe, where Slater mentions that he'll be retiring after this case. As Slater and Hoskins leave, Del phones Boycie and tells him that Slater's onto them. Boycie suggests that they and Abdul meet tonight, but they can't meet up at any of their places nor the Nag's Head. Del has an idea...

As Boycie and Abdul wait in the trailer of an unsuspecting Denzil's lorry in a car park, Del and Rodney arrive in their Reliant Regal van. Del tells Rodney to stand watch and give a signal if somebody's coming. Rodney asks what the signal, and Del suggests trying to hoot like an owl.

Del enters the trailer and gets the money from Boycie and Abdul to take with him to Amsterdam. As Boycie and Abdul leave, Slater shows up, and Del quickly hides under a big cover, but unfortunately gets locked in the trailer.

The trip doesn't go as planned when Del is accidentally transported up to Hull by Denzil Whilst there, Del decides that, rather than go through the airports being watched by Slater, they should sail to Holland in a hired boat instead. "Experienced seaman" Albert arrives to captain the boat, although it later emerges that he spent most of his time with the Royal Navy in the boiler room and thus has no experience of navigation. Despite that (and after receiving directions from an oil rig) they make it to Amsterdam, where they meet a Dutch diamond dealer named Van Cleef and conclude the transaction without a hitch, despite the fact that Boycie's money is counterfeit. The Trotters are temporarily sidetracked when they find themselves chased by two Dutch police officers and a man in a trenchcoat. During the chase, Albert stops to catch his breath, and his two nephews decide that they should give themselves up since the police are closing in, but however, the two officers are actually chasing the man in the trenchcoat.

After getting lost in the North Sea again, the Trotters eventually find their way back to England by following the Norland ferry, which goes from Zeebrugge to Hull.

Upon returning home to Peckham and meeting with Boycie and Abdul at the Nag's Head, the group are apprehended by Slater, who, it turns out, was in cahoots with Van Cleef from the start. Slater makes a proposal: either they all go to prison, or he leaves with the diamonds and the money and they walk away free; the Trotters and friends accept the second option. Del vows to get revenge, but Slater mentions that he's going far away from London when he retires, then leaves. Boycie then asks Del where he's going. A frustrated Del tells him that he's going one place where he should've stayed the whole time: home, as well as express how he felt about the failed mission with the following statement: "You sent me half-way round the world, I've been to Amsterdam, I've been to Hull and back, what for? Slater's taken the diamonds, he's taken the money, on top of all that, my two mates have grassed me up." With that said, Del, Rodney, and Albert head off home to Nelson Mandela House.

Meanwhile, Slater barks orders at Hoskins to drive him home, but Hoskins drives his boss straight into a police ambush. It then emerges that Slater's subordinates, even Hoskins, were in turn conspiring against him, and set him up to be caught in possession of the illegal diamonds. Slater desperately pleads with Hoskins to help him, but a smiling Hoskins says that he's paid not to think, but to do his job, as he pulls out a small microphone from his lapel. Also, Van Cleef gets arrested too.

Back at their flat, Del and Albert reveal to Rodney that that their adventure wasn't for nothing, because they had switched two of the diamonds for two of Del's cat's eye cufflinks and kept them, while Rodney reveals that it was he, and not Slater, who took the £15,000. Rodney believes that this is finally the Trotters' chance to be millionaires. Del, unaware that the money Boycie had intended to pay him with was actually real, promptly throws it out of the window, leaving Rodney and Albert open-mouthed, and Del to ask his relatives if they think he's some sort of wally.

[edit] Quote

Abdul: Van Cleef!, I knew we shouldn't have done business with him, Bloody Foreigner! (This said with Van Cleef at all times being in his native Netherlands whilst Abdul living in the UK is clearly of foreign extraction).

[edit] Story Arc

When Denzil drives away at the traffic lights, Del is upset and wonders why Denzil hasn't let him fill his lorry up. Rodney reminds Del of the awful things that he has done to Denzil in the past:

Ruined his wedding reception (Previously mentioned in "Who's a Pretty Boy?").
Almost broken up his marriage to Corrine (she couldn't appear anymore because Eva Mottley, who played Corrine, died).
Flooded his kitchen ("Who's a Pretty Boy?" again).
Stole his £2,000 redundancy money ("As One Door Closes").

[edit] Trivia

This episode was shot entirely on film and also had no laughter track.
Many of the outside scenes were shot in Amsterdam.
It was also the first time that the Trotter's flat had an extra wall. As previous episodes were shot in a studio, there was no fourth wall but now there is a wall shown, where the studio audience would watch the episode being filmed, so that this special had a location feel without any studio bombardments showing.

[edit] Errors

When Hoskins is paying for his breakfast in Sid's Cafe, there is a shot of Sid smoking an "almost burnt out" cigarette, but then 1-2 seconds later from a different shot he is smoking a whole cigarette.
When the Trotters were at the Nag's Head, and Albert was talking to Slater's mother Ruby, she remarked about how her husband Harry never got over Slater joining the police force and "Bloody glad when they put him [Harry] away I [Ruby] was." Yet when Slater returned from his prison sentence in "The Class of '62", he said his father died, and also explained why the prison governer wouldn't give him compassionate parole (the letter his mother wrote).
As the Trotters return to the flat after coming back from Holland, Rodney shows Del the £15,000 and says that he picked it up when they were running around the table from Slater, but when the Trotters were seen running around the table, Rodney quite clearly didn't pick the money up. Then, when the Trotters exited the room after Del told Boycie that he's going home, Rodney did not pick up the money from the table, he just walked out of the room without going near it.